Unruly

A seriously funny, seriously clever history of our early kings and queens by one of our favourite comedians and cultural commentators.

This will be the most refreshing, entertaining history of England you’ll have ever read.

Certainly, the funniest.

Because David Mitchell will explain how it is not all names, dates or ungraspable historical headwinds, but instead show how it’s really just a bunch of random stuff that happened with a few lucky bastards ending up on top. Some of these bastards were quite strange, but they were in charge, so we quite literally lived, and often still live, by their rules.

It’s a great story. And it’s our story. If you want to know who we are in modern Britain, you need to read this book.

Unruly is part Horrible Histories part jolly romp guided by Alan Bennett. Perhaps this is how history should be done: not by patient scholars, but by free-swearing actor-comedians cramming more ideas and jokes into their pages than many professionals have committed to print in their careers. – Guardian

Full of jokes and canny insights, 100 per cent sparkier and more reverent than your school textbooks – I

An enjoyable, rollicking read, definitely not a conventional history book – Sunday Times

I don’t think anyone other than David Mitchell could have written this book. It’s clever, funny and makes you think quite differently about history we thought we knew – DAN SNOW, HISTORIAN AND BROADCASTER

By turns fascinating and funny – there is a jewel of an insight or a refreshing blast of clarifying wit on every page. David brings a delightfully contrary and hilariously cantankerous eye to the history of the English Monarchy. Informative, illuminating and very very funny – JESSE ARMSTRONG, CREATOR OF SUCCESSION AND PEEP SHOW

Mitchell clearly knows his history, with a book that owes as much to Monty Python as it does to Simon Schama – Andrew Marr

A Peep Show history of England – Sunday Times